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The logic of story Our 14-day coaching programme, The Logic of Story, begins in just four short days on May 7. It explores the ways in which writers can “glue” the elements of their stories [...]

Even seasoned writers sometimes forget about what characters want. The more we work with writers and their stories, the more I’ve come to realise that “wanting” is the very essence of narrative. [...]

Idly in search of ideas that might amuse and instruct you, I found myself watching one of the interminable Mission Impossible movies, in which the utterly and impossibly intrepid Ethan Hunt [...]

Story exists because of characters – and what those characters want. This was brought home to me again recently by an exercise we set in one of our courses. We asked our participants to think of [...]

I haven’t seen Lady Bird, winner of one of the top awards at the Golden Globes last night, but I have read the script – and one of its features confirms something we have always said about [...]

One of our mentoring participants is busy writing a charming memoir about settling in a small community – trying to make friends and build a meaningful life among the sometimes eccentric people [...]

We’re about to cruise past Torghatten, a mountain on an island a kilometre or two off the Norwegian mainland, and just half an hour south of the Arctic Circle. It’s distinguished by an [...]

Upcoming courses 30-Day Writing Workout, Online – 1 to 30 August Creative Saturday, Cape Town – 5 August Venice Writing Retreat, Venice, Italy – 6 to 13 September Stow-on-the-Wold Writing Weekend [...]

  Upcoming courses 30-Day Writing Workout, Online – 1 to 30 August Venice Writing Retreat, Venice, Italy – 6 to 13 September Stow-on-the-Wold Writing Weekend Writing Workshop, Cotswolds, [...]

Stephen King said in On Writing that writing a story is a little like digging up a fossil. You spot a fragment of skull protruding from the rock. You carefully disinter that end of the fossil, [...]

Here’s a thing: I bought a David Baldacci novel this weekend. I’m not sure that I’ve read him before, although it’s hardly possible to avoid Baldaccis in any given airport, in any given [...]